A Brief Introduction to the Higgs Boson and Its Implications for Physics

The Higgs boson is very rare and unstable. It only appears for a fraction of a second when we smash protons together at very high energies in the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs boson is the manifestation of the Higgs field, which fills the entire universe and interacts with other particles. The more a particle interacts with the Higgs field, the more mass it has.T

The Higgs field is everywhere and everything?

Well, not everything. Photons, for example, do not interact with the Higgs field and have no mass. They travel at the speed of light. Light is different from matter. Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation. Matter is made of atoms, which are composed of protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks, which are held together by gluons. Electrons and quarks are elementary particles that get their mass from the Higgs field.

The Higgs boson decays into other particles almost immediately. But studying it helps us understand how nature works at the most fundamental level and test our theories of physics.